The commissioning [project management]

The installation, in a noisy, dusty, poorly lit underground experimental hall, was hard going. Then the technicians went home, leaving three engineers to commission it, and that was worse. I found that a helpful therapy was to sit down in the evening and send an E-mail back to base, trying to convey a little of the day´s work. I should explain that this was a few years ago, when E-mail was more of a novelty than it is now. I had a terminal in my hostel room, but back at base there was just a shared dial-up connection, so my messages were printed and put on a notice board. As a reminder to managers of what life can be like in the field, here are the E-mails of the final two weeks. I hope enough time has passed that they will not cause embarrassment, and of course I have changed the names, but the story really is true. The project was a large superconducting magnet, supplied to APPL (American Particle Physics Laboratory).